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As a New Yorker himself, our president should know the benefits of welcoming people from other countries.
When I was social services commissioner in New York City, I witnessed one of the great comeback stories in American history. After suffering from the crime, poverty, lost jobs, and general malaise that characterized the city in the 1970s and 1980s, New York rose again to become the city as we know it today — safe and thriving economically and culturally. How did that happen?
A few factors contributed to NYC’s resurgence. Changes in policing strategy made the streets safe, and work-based welfare reforms were crucial for reducing poverty. And a more pro-business set of regulatory and tax policies helped to increase employment.
But we should also credit what was obviously before our eyes: The influx of individuals from diverse cultures who reinvigorated the city. Foreign-born New Yorkers were vital to our rebound. When I think of our city’s recovery, I think of Dominicans, Russians, Jews, Japanese, Mexicans — people who brought the city strong families and an entrepreneurial spark as they pursued a better life for themselves and their children. New York City’s foreign-born population doubled between 1970 and 2000, capped off by a more than 35% increase between 1990 and 2000, injecting new life into a downtrodden city when we most needed it.
As many have pointed out, this has been America’s story for quite a long time. Former AEI president Arthur Brooks frequently calls our ancestors who came to this country “ambitious riffraff,” bold individuals who spoke different languages and ate different foods but shared a renegade, distinctly American spirit. That’s how we all got here, whether we came from north, south, east, or west.
If a think tank president’s words don’t do it for you, take it from someone who knew a thing or two about the strength of our Union. “We have among us people,” said Abraham Lincoln in 1858, “whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection by blood, they find they have none, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find . . . ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel . . . that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”
By the belief in and commitment to our founders’ noble ideals of every person’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we become Americans in the fullest sense.
There is no “where we came from” except a state of mind that longs for the values of the American founding.
This is what is particularly disappointing about the president’s recent remarks. They give the impression that the president of the United States harbors a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be American.
Our country was explicitly designed to show that it is possible to live amongst those who disagree with us on just about everything. That’s why we have federalism, separation of powers, and the First Amendment — not because we should always agree with all our fellow Americans but because we never will. That is what makes America exceptional.
We should love our country and want to stay here precisely because it allows us to express our beliefs about our country in vastly different ways. My version of this is different from that of some progressives. I emphasize a limited federal government, social programs that encourage work, and free-market solutions to most of our problems. And I think that America has been overwhelmingly a force for good in its history.
But if I cannot stomach my neighbors’ disagreement with that, I will have abandoned the project altogether.
Political pluralism — radical toleration for even those whose philosophies and lifestyles we find abhorrent — is a cornerstone of this country. It is in our DNA.
Cultural, ethnic, and philosophical diversity do not just drive our national entrepreneurial spirit and invigorate our struggling cities, as I saw happen in New York. Diversity allows us to live out the American project to the fullest, and sets us apart from the rest of the world, a world in which no other country is as diverse or dynamic as ours.
One more word from a wise president. George Washington did not like the word “toleration” in referring to minority groups and opinions. He thought it implied a kind of above-the-fray “indulgence of others.”
Washington thought we should be better than mere indulgence. All Americans, he wrote, should “enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants; while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
There is no “where we came from” except a state of mind that longs for the values of the American founding. This is what is particularly disappointing about the president’s recent remarks. They give the impression that the president of the United States harbors a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be American.
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